Hamas handed over three Israeli hostages on Saturday in the latest stage of a ceasefire deal aimed at ending the 15-month war in Gaza.

Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi, both taken hostage from Kibbutz Be'eri during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, and Or Levy, abducted that day from the Nova music festival, were led onto a Hamas podium by gunmen.

Dozens of armed Hamas fighters were deployed at the site in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, as the men were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross which was to transport them to Israeli forces in Gaza, Reuters reported.

In exchange, Israel will release 183 Palestinian prisoners, some convicted of involvement in attacks that killed dozens of people and including 18 serving life sentences and 111 detained in Gaza during the war, according to Hamas.

The exchange is the latest in a series of swaps that have so far returned 13 Israeli and five Thai hostages abducted during the Hamas attack and released 583 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

Despite hiccups, a 42-day ceasefire and hostage-for-prisoner exchange worked out with U.S. backing and mediation by Egypt and Qatar has held up since it took effect nearly three weeks ago.

But fears the deal might collapse before all the hostages are free have grown since U.S. President Donald Trump's surprise call for Palestinians to be moved from Gaza and for the enclave to be handed to the United States and developed into the "Riviera of the Middle East".

Arab states and Palestinian groups have rejected the proposal, which critics said would amount to ethnic cleansing.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, welcomed Trump's intervention and his defence minister ordered the military to make plans to allow Palestinians who wished to leave Gaza to do so.

Under the ceasefire deal, 33 Israeli children, women and sick, wounded and older men are to be released during an initial phase in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

Negotiations on a second phase began this week aimed at returning the remaining hostages and agreeing a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in preparation for a final end to the war.

Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

In response, Israel launched an air and ground war in Gaza that has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and devastated much of the narrow enclave.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday authorized economic and travel sanctions targeting people who work on International Criminal Court investigations of U.S. citizens or U.S. allies such as Israel, repeating action he took during his first term.

The move coincides with a visit to Washington by Israel's Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu, who - along with his former defense minister and a leader of Palestinian militant group Hamas - is wanted by the ICC over the war in the Gaza Strip, Reuters reported.

It was unclear how quickly the U.S. would announce names of people sanctioned. During the first Trump administration in 2020, Washington imposed sanctions on then-prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and one of her top aides over the ICC's investigation into alleged war crimes by American troops in Afghanistan.

The ICC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The sanctions include freezing any U.S. assets of those designated and barring them and their families from visiting the United States.

The 125-member ICC is a permanent court that can prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression against the territory of member states or by their nationals. The United States, China, Russia and Israel are not members.

Trump signed the executive order after U.S. Senate Democrats last week blocked a Republican-led effort to pass legislation setting up a sanctions regime targeting the war crimes court.

The court has taken measures to shield staff from possible U.S. sanctions, paying salaries three months in advance, as it braced for financial restrictions that could cripple the war crimes tribunal, sources told Reuters last month.

In December, the court's president, judge Tomoko Akane, warned that sanctions would "rapidly undermine the Court's operations in all situations and cases, and jeopardise its very existence."

Russia has also taken aim at the court. In 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Russia has banned entry to ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan and placed him and two ICC judges on its wanted list.

Eleven people were killed in a shooting at an adult education centre on Tuesday, Swedish police said, marking the country's deadliest gun attack in what the prime minister called a "painful day."

Police said the gunman was believed to be among those killed and a search for other possible victims was continuing at the school, located in the city of Orebro. The gunman's motive was not immediately known, Reuters reported.

"We know that 10 or so people have been killed here today. The reason that we can't be more exact currently is that the extent of the incident is so large," local police chief Roberto Eid Forest told a news conference.

Later in the evening the police website said: "At this time, there are 11 deaths due to the incident. The number of injured is still unclear. We currently have no information on the condition of those who have been injured."

Forest told the press conference police believed the gunman had acted alone and that terrorism was not currently suspected as a motive, though he cautioned that much remained unknown. He said the suspected gunman had not previously been known to police.

"We have a big crime scene, we have to complete the searches we are conducting in the school. There are a number of investigative steps we are taking: a profile of the perpetrator, witness interviews," Forest said.

The shooting took place in Orebro, some 200 km (125 miles) west of Stockholm, at the Risbergska school for adults who did not complete their formal education or failed to get the grades to continue to higher education. It is located on a campus that also houses schools for children, read the report.

Ali Elmokad was outside the Orebro University Hospital, looking for his relative, not yet knowing if he was among the injured or the dead.

"We've been trying to get hold of him all day, we haven't been successful," he said, adding that he had a friend who also attended the school. "What she saw was so terrible. She only saw people lying on the floor, injured and blood everywhere."

Police said it was still going through the crime scene and had searched several addresses in Orebro after the attack.

Late on Tuesday, police vans and personnel were still outside an apartment building in central Orebro that had been raided earlier.

"We saw a lot of police with drawn weapons," said Lingam Tuohmaki, 42, who lives in the same building. "We were at home and heard a commotion outside."

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said it was the worst mass shooting in Swedish history.

"It is hard to take in the full extent of what has happened today -- the darkness that now lowers itself across Sweden tonight," he told a news conference.

King Carl XVI Gustav conveyed his condolences. "It is with deep sadness and dismay that my family and I received the news about the terrible atrocity in Orebro," he said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed her sympathy on X, saying: "In this dark hour, we stand with the people of Sweden."

Maria Pegado, 54, a teacher at the school, said someone threw open the door to her classroom just after lunch break and shouted to everyone to get out, Reuters reported.

"I took all my 15 students out into the hallway and we started running," she told Reuters by phone. "Then I heard two shots but we made it out. We were close to the school entrance.

"I saw people dragging injured out, first one, then another. I realised it was very serious," she said.

Many students in Sweden's adult school system are immigrants seeking to improve basic education and gain degrees to help them find jobs in the Nordic country while also learning Swedish.

Sweden has been struggling with a wave of shootings and bombings caused by an endemic gang crime problem that has seen the country of 10 million people record by far the highest per capita rate of gun violence in the EU in recent years.

However, fatal attacks at schools are rare.

Ten people were killed in seven incidents of deadly violence at schools between 2010 and 2022, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.

Sweden has a high level of gun ownership by European standards, mainly linked to hunting, though it is much lower than in the United States, while the gang crime wave has highlighted the high incidence of illegal weapons, read the report.

In one of the highest-profile crimes of the past decade, a 21-year-old masked assailant driven by racist motives killed a teaching assistant and a boy and wounded two others in 2015.

In 2017, a man driving a truck mowed down shoppers on a busy street in central Stockholm before crashing into a department store. Five people died in that attack.